“I try to help you when I can-we’re friends, aren’t we?” She lets a few beats pass, gives a bright smile. I think, Feelings have no currency in this community. Then she says, “So, have we had the catharsis already? Can we be friends again now?” She giggles. “Maybe vampire isn’t such a bad rap. With seven billion humans full of blood, it’s a smart choice of food source. Let me be your very special tame vampire, I’ll protect you from the competition.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because you have this little problem with me-aren’t you leaving out a crucial piece of evidence?”
“How’s that?”
“Your own brother, man. Sonchai, you are closely related to the biggest vampire of all. You must know that?”
I let my frustration reach a kind of head, then I exhale. When I inhale again I am able to say slowly, “Krom, just tell me as much as you can for now. Just so I can at least start to get a grip.”
She nods, as if I have at last pressed the right button with the right attitude. “I was recruited. It was like a mutual search. It was as though I was tunneling from underground, trying to reach the surface, and someone else was tunneling down from the surface, trying to save me. The kind of thing people used to associate with religious experience, but there was nothing religious about it. Except I finally found the guts to have the tattoo I’d been dreaming about since age twelve-that was a religious experience.” She flashes me a glance. “When I think about it now, it seems obvious, even ordinary.”
“What does?”
“At the jungle camp you visited, very few of the kids had any Asian blood. Maybe three, four at the most, fathered by Vietcong who had been forced to participate in MKUltra. The Chinese needed Asian genes in their products. They couldn’t very well have a super police force of blond blue-eyed Caucasians. So, they were looking for volunteers. Naturally, the program I entered had to be adjusted to accommodate my age and background. They didn’t have me from birth, so I was never going to be as advanced as Goldman’s children. I spent two years at a special facility in Qinghai. We shared it with some kids who were going to be the next generation of Olympic athletes. It was entirely voluntary for the first few months, then I had to make a decision: leave or commit for life. There was someone there I related to, someone I wanted to stay close to, so I committed for life. In return they made certain adjustments to my brain. Very minor compared to what you’ve seen from Goldman’s program, but enough to make a difference. Here, there’s something I’ve been waiting to show you, when you started to ask the right questions.”
She takes out her phone again, swipes a few times, then shows me a photograph. At first I cannot see the relevance. I have to flick from it to her and back again quite a few times. “That’s really you?” She smiles. The more I look at the photo the more I understand. The young woman on the tiny screen is exactly what I might have expected from someone of Krom’s background. There is the obvious intelligence in her eyes, but she wears the sullen, resentful face of any young person who has no intention of adjusting to or participating in her society. She is unkempt, her hair an orange-and-green mess, her T-shirt looks as if she has picked it up off the floor, her head droops and she is scowling. An unhappy, even tragic outsider: lost, utterly lost, and about to tip into something sad. There is no direction in that soul, none at all. I am stunned at the then-and-now comparison and find myself nodding while I try to take it all in.
“How many…I mean, how many of you are there?”
“On the Chinese side, only a few hundred. But each one of us will train at least ten, so you get an exponential curve. The program takes decades to complete, but a recruit can return to society and operate within five years. It wasn’t difficult for them to pull a few strings to plant me in the Thai police. The Americans have fewer trainees, at the moment. They went too far too fast-you can see the results. The Chinese have been less ambitious in the talents they’ve implanted in us.” A pause. “With a few exceptions. As with any advanced technology, it’s generally more efficient to buy, borrow, or steal the other guy’s research than work it all out from scratch. But you must always be on guard against double-bluffs: maybe the technology you’re buying is flawed, even deliberately sabotaged. Basically, that’s what your case is all about.” She gazes at me. “The Market Murder with your name on it.” She takes her phone back, gives the photo a quick glance, and deletes it. I wonder if she’s kept it there just for me. “Like any applied science, once it’s seen to work it can’t be stopped. It becomes inevitable.”
“A new kind of human race?”
“Why not? Once we were mere Homo sapiens: apes who could think. Now we’re Homo sapien sapiens: apes who can think about thinking.”
“And the next phase-your phase? How would you define that?”
She thinks about it. “Depends. The Americans learned a lot. They started to think of it as a return.”
“A return?”
“Something weird happened in Cambodia, in Angkor, while Goldman was there.”
“A return to what?”
“Exactly. That’s the question, isn’t it?”
She takes a few bites of her food, chews thoughtfully, then says, “Be ready, my friend. I know you hate me right now, but I’m still your friend and my advice is be ready. I don’t know exactly when or where, someone will call you. All I can tell you is that the intelligence is pretty good this week and the listeners are picking up signals of intense activity. Someone is going to make a risky move, because they’re desperate. Sorry to be mysterious-but I really, sincerely, lovingly recommend you stay alert. And get some sleep, you look awful.”
“But your SMS…You said Goldman has gone ballistic? Was that just a ploy to get me out here?”
“No. Actually we are talking about a sideshow, but he has been caught bugging the station.” All of a sudden she starts to cackle. “He had devices all over the building, he bribed the tea lady because she serves rooms on every floor. You’ll see.” She consults her watch. “Vikorn has called a meeting. The FBI legal attaché will be there. I would like you to meet him. If there’s no chance to talk with him before the meeting, we’ll do it after.”
“FBI?”
“The Chinese made a sophisticated sweep yesterday, using the latest antisurveillance technology. It was just a gambit, though, because we’ve known about the CIA listening to us for months. The evidence is overwhelming, however, and therefore very embarrassing. The CIA decided to let Goldman take the flak. They’ve washed their hands of him and left everything to the FBI attaché at the embassy.” She spoons up the thick brown sauce and skillfully includes the half of the boiled egg, chews, swallows, and smiles. “But like I say, it’s a sideshow.”
“How’s that?”
“The Chinese are creating a smokescreen to cover the fact they’ve finally broken one of the CIA’s most challenging telephonic encryption systems.” Now she allows a crooked grin to build as she stares at me. “We have some of Goldman’s most intimate conversations with his controller at Langley. So, time to raise hell about CIA bugs at the station.” She shrugs. “Apparently it’s basic diplomacy-not my field.”
When she stands up I notice her laptop case, which she hoists over her shoulder. While I have her in a communicative mood, I decide to ask something I have been curious about for some time. “Krom, tell me, why is your name Krom? Isn’t that Cambodian?”
She cocks her head. “The Krom are a Cambodian tribe, from the south.” She grins. “Full marks for asking, Detective. It’s sheer coincidence, though. My father called me that because I was conceived over there, when they were on their honeymoon.”
–
In the couple of minutes it takes to reach the station and walk up to the big conference room, Krom morphs into the super-efficient police inspector for the day, hardly looking me in the eye. When we enter I see that the high-tech monitor is switched on and showing a screen saver with fractals of narcotic color and intensity. Goldman, that giant, is already seated and gives us a look of aggressive curiosity as we enter. There are two other men waiting: Colonel Vikorn slouched at the head of the table, and a pale slim man with jet-black hair about five ten in dark suit and tie, in his late thirties or early forties. He interests me because he is a leuk kreung: a half-caste like me. The non-farang half of him is not Thai, though: I would guess his Chinese genes originate in the north where people are pale and tall. I give Vikorn a high wai, which he acknowledges with a nod.